Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier filed a civil lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman on Monday, making Florida the first state to sue the company over design and safety concerns related to ChatGPT.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier's civil suit accuses OpenAI of putting profit over user safety, making Florida the first state to target the company
Photo by Tomohiro Ohsumi / Getty Images
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier filed a civil lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman on Monday, making Florida the first state to sue the company over design and safety concerns related to ChatGPT.
Among the charges enumerated in the filing, per NBC News, are four counts of deceptive and unfair trade practices, two counts each of negligence and product liability violations, and single counts of fraudulent misrepresentation and public nuisance. ChatGPT poses a "great danger of addiction, cognitive decline, suicide, violence, and related harms," the complaint alleges. Unlike a criminal prosecution, the filing pursues monetary penalties and injunctive relief.
"People are getting hurt; parents are getting deceived and they need to pay for it," James Uthmeier said Monday during an event in West Palm Beach, according to Yahoo News. "They need to pay for it by opening up their checkbook and changing the program to ensure there are parental controls and we are not endangering our kids."
Personal liability is sought against Altman, whom the complaint accuses of "reckless and willful conduct" in his role building and running the company. Two specific violent incidents cited in the filing as evidence of real-world harm are a mass shooting at Florida State University, in which the gunman allegedly used ChatGPT during planning, and the deaths of two graduate students at the University of South Florida.
On the issue of sycophancy, the suit contends that ChatGPT's habit of affirming whatever users say fosters unhealthy emotional dependency on the platform and ultimately pressures users into spending money on premium subscription tiers. Marketing materials for ChatGPT also come under fire, with the complaint alleging they mislead consumers by omitting any acknowledgment that the tool regularly generates false, fabricated, or nonsensical outputs.
OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the lawsuit. The company has stated publicly that "safety at every step" guides how its systems are built, and that "safeguards in place to help people, especially teens, when conversations turn sensitive" are already active.
A parallel criminal investigation that Uthmeier launched in late April in the wake of the FSU shooting continues independently of Monday's civil filing. Prior to Monday's filing, the attorney general's office had already compelled OpenAI through subpoena to hand over documents, Yahoo News reports, among them internal policies and training materials touching on self-harm and threats of violence.
The Florida lawsuit adds to a growing list of legal actions against OpenAI. Separate private litigation already targets the company on related grounds, with at least seven individuals' estates or families having brought claims asserting that OpenAI's products drove users to suicide or psychotic breaks, NBC News reports. In January, Character.AI faced its own state-level legal action when Kentucky's attorney general filed suit over the chatbot's alleged dangers to minors.
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